Digital divide, which side are you on and does it bother you?

[timwilky]

Economic enough for Telewest to cable up all those years ago. A good example locally, Buckshaw Village. 1000's of brand new housing and no internet provision from BT. The only way to get a service is to use a local wireless provider. Instead BT should have routed fibre to the premises from day one as the roads were being build and the trunks laid.

To be fair, both telewest and ntl nearly bankrupted themselves laying the fibre. Now, they're in a much stronger position because of that investment.

I'd like to see a much higher level of nationalisation here though, as a solution to the haves and have nots. Split VM in two, infrastructure and services, and merge it with openreach to form a single line owner which all ISPs pay to access. This company can then use the money gained from the access fees to extend the network, with state backing to borrow money to get started.

Dave numbers on the other hand needs to look at non-bt fibre as most of the county has been covered under the digital region initiative.

Energy companies aside, you don't see a lot of this when it comes to gas and electric supply, which has a similar model.

We're forced to use Virgin due to some dodgy deal with providing cable services to the estate. Means they have no incentive to do a decent job. Its usually just about fast enough for iPlayer when it works, but it is intermittent. And as for number of subs off the hub, there are 140 flats in 100mx75m footprint, in London. My parents, half a mile away have (I think) the fastest internet in the country.

Funnily enough though on a similar theme, where we used to live out in the country, loads of people had problems with the phone line reliability except us, our immediate neighbour and the big house up the hill. Previous residents: Lloyd George (big house), his secretary (tiny house next to ours) and his mistress (our house).

so im moving house for a number of reasons one being that my internet is currently just over 1mbps, i called bt and im paying for up to 16mbps but only getting 1, so yeah i called them and said i wanted fiber optic which in my area would apparently be up to 76mbps so obviously i wanted to get it installed, just before i finalised it i thought id ask them what my estimated speed would be. 4MBPS!!! they would charge me loads more money simply for an extra 3mb. i told them where to go and now hopefully im moving just after crimbo into a better place with decent internet

Originally Posted by timwilky

Economic enough for Telewest to cable up all those years ago.

the company both backed by a massive US company AND which spent most of the 90's in severe financial trouble as a result of its cabling costs you mean?

Originally Posted by timwilky

A good example locally, Buckshaw Village. 1000's of brand new housing and no internet provision from BT. The only way to get a service is to use a local wireless provider. Instead BT should have routed fibre to the premises from day one as the roads were being build and the trunks laid.

It's not as easy as that AND we're required to pull in the copper alongside the fibre if we do to provide standard phone lines for those that want them. Our budget's spent I'm afraid so they'll have to wait their turn like everyone else.

Quite a few new sites ARE getting fibred from the get-go now but it depends on what's available at the exchange, a roll of fibre on it's own doesn't achieve a lot.

[L3nny]

Live in a small city in southern England and I get less than 2mb

Was getting around 14 in Warwick

All depends on how close you are to the exchange I suppose.

Originally Posted by L3nny

All depends on how close you are to the exchange I suppose.

pretty much.

the longer the line is the more the signal attenuates and the more external noise and crosstalk you get.

All that adds up to distance and speed being inversely related.

They're working on ways to improve it all the time.

[andrewsmith]

Originally Posted by orose

To be fair, both telewest and ntl nearly bankrupted themselves laying the fibre. Now, they're in a much stronger position because of that investment.

Along with C&W (now owned by Vodaphone), energis (bought by C&W) and a few others that became apart of Telewest or C&W

The only issue that is happening now is the fibres are decaying with age (lifespan of about 20 years) so they are all upgrading the systems gradually

Originally Posted by orose

I'd like to see a much higher level of nationalisation here though, as a solution to the haves and have nots. Split VM in two, infrastructure and services, and merge it with openreach to form a single line owner which all ISPs pay to access. This company can then use the money gained from the access fees to extend the network, with state backing to borrow money to get started.

Dave numbers on the other hand needs to look at non-bt fibre as most of the county has been covered under the digital region initiative.

Energy companies aside, you don't see a lot of this when it comes to gas and electric supply, which has a similar model.

Agreed

I'd be happy to be nationalised. Don't see it happening though things are generally going the other way.

[tigersaw]

We are close to 80mb, but for what I do 2mb would be plenty.